P and I have been working on an alphabet book for almost a year now. We’ve made about 10 letters so far. Clearly, it’s at the top of our to do list.

The teacher in me wants to get out all of my old alphabet activities and drill those letters! But, I know that he is 3, and a smart boy, and he will learn those letters and all of the other things he needs to know in school. I know that learning through play is much more of a priority at home right now.

That being said, when P shows an interest in letters, I seize the moment.

We started off with the letter P since that’s the first letter of his name. Anytime I saw the letter on a sign or truck, I would point it out and ask him which letter that was. He always says, “P for Peyton!”. After that, we moved to important names that he could easily associate. D like Daddy, M for mommy, etc.

I will typically take a piece of art he’s done, cut it in the shape of a letter and glue it to construction paper. Then, we take it to get laminated. It’s not cheap to laminate (over $1 for 1 page) but I figure this is something that is worth it to keep for the long haul. Plus, P LOVES getting things laminated. It makes him extra proud. After laminating, I punch a hole in the top corner and add it to our ring of letters.

Here are some letters we’ve done:

Bubble wrap prints for “O” (we also talked about circles around this time since O is a circle)

Songs! I love learning (teaching) through music. Obviously, the alphabet song is good to know, but Alphardy is another fun one. You can teach sign language to sign while you sing (this is something I did with my kindergarteners).

Alphabet Books- P has this book memorized. Anything to do with cars/trucks!

**I only focus on capital letters right now. Kids typically don’t start to write in lowercase until kindergarten because it takes more fine motor strength. If it came up, I would just say there is more than one way to write the letters and that is just one of the ways. Once he is comfortable recognizing most of the upper case letters, I will introduce more of the lowercase letters.